If you’ve considered expanding where you sell products, beyond your current ecommerce store, now is the time to do it.

Ecommerce continues to grow in profitability as more and more consumers turn to the web for product purchases. Online Consumer spending grew by more than 13 percent between 2013 and 2014, and again between 2014 and 2015 by 14.6 percent. Sales are projected to keep climbing, and by some estimates, ecommerce sales will hit nearly $500 billion by 2018.

Those purchases take place all over the web, whether they’re made on hosted shopping platforms, which are branded to sellers, such as Shopify and BigCommerce, or through online marketplaces, like eBay, Etsy and Amazon.

If you want to expand, the best approach is to analyze individual marketplaces, and determine which ones would be the most lucrative with minimal deployment time. This way, you can develop, and prioritize a strategy to test one marketplace before expanding into another.

Why should you consider multi-channel marketplace expansion?

Individual marketplaces have their own systems, processes, quirks and limitations that you have to learn to navigate. It would be tough to juggle it all if you expand into Etsy, Amazon and eBay all at once. Keep this in mind when evaluating your prospects for expansion.

Grow your sales.

One of the main reasons individual online retailers expand into online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay is the potential for increased sales.

Forty-four percent of consumers go straight to Amazon to find products, so expanding into a popular platform like this can translate into a major boost in sales for your business. Make sure you’re capable of fulfilling orders from these increased sales.

Acquire new customers.

Eighty-one percent of shoppers research products and brands before making purchases. This can lead to increased traffic to your site, where you can then build rapport with the consumer.

Also, the “find everything you need” nature of marketplaces creates better sales opportunities. For instance, customers may start searching for one product, and discover something you’re selling instead, which translates to new customers that otherwise might never find you.

Start paying listing fees.

Aside from hosting and transaction fees, it costs you nothing to list products on your own site. If you expand into marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Etsy, you will have to pay listing fees. These can include any combination of flat rate charges, as well as a percentage of each sale.

Fee structures vary from site to site, and the fees you pay might even depend on the category of your products. You have to consider your margins when taking on these extra costs of doing business in a marketplace.

Sync your data.

You’ll need to make sure you have a solid system in place for handling incoming orders, managing inventory and fulfilling orders across multiple channels. Each marketplace pulls from the same inventory, but those channels don’t talk to each other. You’ll need a platform to sync all of your information.

Software platforms like Ordoro and Sellbrite can integrate with multiple marketplaces - even Shopify and BigCommerce -- so everything is synced, and inventory is managed appropriately.

Which marketplace is best for expansion?

List with Amazon.

Amazon is a popular choice for ecommerce sites that want to add more product listings and grow their revenue, especially given the sheer volume of consumer traffic. Here's few things to consider about Amazon.

If you don’t sell unique products, your products will share an existing listing.The best-rated seller is listed under the “Buy Now” box, while you might fall into the “Available from Other Sellers” category, which might bury you. This means you’ll have to find ways to stay competitive.

You can handle fulfillment on your own or ship your products to Amazon, and let them handle shipping for you, for an extra fee.

List with Etsy.

With more than 25 million active shoppers, Etsy has grown considerably in the decade since it launched. While it’s a seller marketplace, just like eBay and Amazon, there are a few things that separate it from the norm.

Eighty-six percent of Etsy sellers are female, typically individual manufacturers of artisanal products, who sell to a similar audience.

Carefully weigh each marketplace’s advantages and disadvantages before deciding to expand beyond your current ecommerce site.

There are a number of factors to keep in mind, including a lot of different things, such as:

If the profit is there based on margins,

If it’s a place where your ideal customer can be found,

If you have the infrastructure to handle multiple channels, and

If your products are a good fit for the marketplace.

Approach expansions strategically - just like you’re launching a new ecommerce business, and you’ll find the right marketplace for your goods.

Matt Orlic

Matt Orlic is the founder of Inspire Brands Group, which creates and develops brands worldwide by designing and manufacturing products in several industries, including consumer electronics, sports equipment, toys, sports apparel and more. H...